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Friday, October 1, 2010

Surprise Heiden'er Festival

This past Sunday, Bryan and I decided to ride our bikes to the nearby town of Heiden. Heiden is about 3 miles away, so it was a pretty easy bike ride. It really blows my mind how high density the living is here in Europe. In approximately the same distance it used to take me to get to the grocery store from my house in Florida, I can now go from my house to another town.
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Here is a map from Borken to Heiden.

We really didn't have any expectations for Heiden, and figured we would ride through town and come right back. If no stores were open in Borken on Sunday, then surely nothing would be open in the much smaller town of Heiden. To our delight and surprise, Sunday was Heiden's annual Fall "Heiden'er" Festival, so the town was bustling with lots of activity, food, games, vendors and things to do. Here are some photos from the day.

Just as we arrived, the Tractor Competition began and we had to scram out of the street real fast because about a dozen tractors were headed our way.

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Here are Bryan and Dylan in front of some of the tractors.

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We met the crazy bubble man who is showing Dylan how to make heart shaped bubbles. I didn't align the word "Schmuck" next to Bryan's head on purpose, though it's pretty funny in hindsight.

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The bubble man made this huge bubble that really impressed Bryan.

On every street they had little play houses for kids to play in. Dylan didn't want to go inside; he just wanted to open and close the door.

The festival had a pretty impressive petting zoo with goats, donkeys, ponies and other farm animals.

Shortly after we took this picture, some big strapping German men had a race down the street pushing these giant bales of hay.